It is estimated that 22 million homes and an additional 6 million businesses in the United States are equipped with some form of security or intrusion detection and/or alarm system. A number of those systems are monitored remotely by third party monitoring services. The five largest security monitoring companies account for over 10 million subscribers, at a rate of up to $600 per year, each. This ongoing operating expense should be avoided.
Moreover, third party monitoring systems suffer from certain drawbacks even when operating as intended. The third-party monitoring company employs monitors who collectively monitor all that company's clients. Those monitors may be overwhelmed by a surge in alarm states, delaying their response, and onward notification to the client. A third-party monitor may not have sufficient familiarity with each structure being monitored to make adequate use of the alarm information, absent a user's assistance. This makes the third-party monitoring solution sub-optimal for the task of remotely monitoring a security, intrusion detection, or alarm system. The present state of the art is therefore lacking.